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Tuesday, 18 July 2017

Saturday and Sunday 15th and 16th July

Saturday was unseasonably cool and damp, not wet enough to
soak, but enough to fog optics and spectacles. Sunday saw a welcome return to
warm and mostly sunny conditions.

Car Park Field Songthrush (c) Nick Truby

This weekend young, newly fledged or fledging youngsters took
centre stage: Common Terns on the northern Lagoon, Marsh Harriers around the
whole reedbed and parties of mixed tits and warblers in the hedgerows.

Common Terns (c) Nick Truby

Over the last few years the Tern raft out from the second
screen has only attracted one or at most two pairs of Common Terns. In one
year, they managed to raise just one chick to adulthood and last year both
chicks were predated. This year has been very different, nine pairs have raised
at least seven young, based just on the part of the raft we can see. I am sure
that there are more than that out there. Their numbers mean that they can feed,
provision the chicks and still have sufficient adults left over to drive off potential
avian predators and the extra strand of wire on the electric fence appears to
have kept any mammals at bay. The chicks are now starting to fly and when
watching them it is quite amazing to see just how adept and manoeuvrable they
are on so little flying experience, judging landing however is taking a bit
more learning.

Lunch arriving (c) Nick Truby

The parent birds are having no trouble at all in finding
sufficient food to keep them growing. Birds were arriving all the time with
quite large fish mostly unidentifiable as to species, however last week one
photographer posted a picture of a bird arriving at the nest site with a
goldfish in its bill!

Sedgie (c) JR

The Marsh Harriers have fledged their young and their
disposition has confirmed what we had thought, namely that there were two
nests. Two females with a single male between the two. There are two juveniles
being seen from the second screen and a further two that are in the hedge on
the southern side of the big oak tree and on the northern edge of Greenaways.
We witnessed several food passes over the weekend. The young birds sit in the
trees and bushes, watching and waiting for the adults to return and then fly up
to take the prey item from their talons or to chase it down when the adult
releases it. When they are sitting up waiting it is possible to scope them very
easily and you can admire their beautiful, uniform and pristine chocolate
coloured plumage set off by a ginger cap and face.

Young Moorhen above (c) Derek Lane and Young Water Rail below (c) JR

Two Common Cranes were seen on Sunday flying in from fields
to the east, some very poor photographs that I took do not appear to show any
colour rings on them, but that might just have been due to their distance and
my blurry pictures. It could well be however that we still have four or even
five individuals in the vicinity.

Long Meadow Redstart (c) Pete Roby

The Hen Harrier is still being seen from time to time and it
is looking very scruffy as it starts to moult into plumage that confirms as we
thought, that it is a young male. Over the coming weeks, assuming it remains, we
should begin to see it looking much smarter.

The first returning Redstarts have been found in Long Meadow,
with three individuals seen and heard on Sunday. They will be with us for a
number of weeks now as they moult and fatten up for migration, a reminder that
nature and the seasons never stand still and autumn is lurking around the
corner.